Day 53 Woodhall Spa to Wroxall 8 June 2018

Today we visited RAF Cosford, an active RAF base that was preparing for an air show. The new facility houses an extensive collection of British and Soviet aircraft from the Cold War. They also had a very good collection of WW2 aircraft which included Japanese and German as well.  

The grey skies held off with any rain and we visited the National Memorial Arboretum. This garden is firstly a memorial to those British lives lost since WW2 and the trees are frequently dedicated to individuals but there are a plethora of monuments and memorials to units or corps throughout. 

Possibly the most moving one is to those who were Shot At Dawn.  These were those soldiers who were executed by the British during WW1.  One lad executed was only 17, under age anyway. There were also Canadians and New Zealanders executed, but Australia never allowed it, presumably after the Breaker Morant Affair from the Boer War. I was intrigued that many names had Age Unknown. The army is usually excellent at record keeping and I am surprised that there were so many. Unless they enlisted under an assumed name it would have been easy through the available census to determine how old they were. Perhaps they didn’t want to be greatly embarrassed by revealing exactly how many boys they executed.

We had dinner tonight in the bar of the htel wheer the dambusters Squadron had their bar. Exciting stuff.